Mrs. McGinty's Dead: Hercule Poirot Investigates

About the book

Well, it's no wonder. The plot-suspicion for an elderly woman's murder falls on her mysterious lodger-is from Agatha Christie. The wonderful character happens to be the world's most famous sleuth, Hercule Poirot.

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Agatha Christie is the bestselling author of all time. She has sold over two billion books worldwide and has been translated into over 45 languages. In a writing career that spanned more than half a century, Agatha Christie wrote eighty novels and short story collections. She also wrote over a dozen plays, including The Mousetrap, which is now the longest running play in theatrical history.
Christie's first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was the first to feature her eccentric Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. One of the most famous fictional creations of all time, Poirot's 'little grey cells' triumphed over some of the most devious criminal minds ever created in crime fiction. Christie’s last published novel, Sleeping Murder, featured her other world-famous sleuth, the shrewdly inquisitive Miss Jane Marple of St. Mary Mead. Miss Marple appears in twelve novels, and twenty short stories; the first novel to feature her was The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930. The Poirot and Marple novels have been widely dramatized in feature films and television movies. Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), And Then There Were None (1945), and Death on the Nile (1978) are a few of the successful films based on her works.
Agatha Christie also wrote six romantic novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. She also wrote nonfiction: one book, Come Tell Me How you Live, describes her archaeological travels with her husband Max. The other two are collections of poems, stories, and verses, some with a religious theme. She also wrote her autobiography which she completed in 1976. Although synonymous with crime fiction, the breadth of themes in her novels is quite extraordinary and she deserves her place as one of the best-loved writers of all time.read more

Reviews for Mrs. McGinty's Dead: Hercule Poirot Investigates

mstrust

When an elderly and poor cleaning lady is murdered her lodger is tried and sentenced to death quickly. But something just doesn't seem right to Superintendent Spence, so he asks for M. Poirot's help. Poirot sees no reason to question the guilty verdict at first-until his interest is piqued by a bottle of ink.This is a good one. I managed to figure out the murderer but got the motives wrong. Great characters.read more

Now retired, Hercule Poirot does not have enough to keep him busy. The only important events in his life are his three meals a day, and so when Superintendent Bert Spence, who he met on an earlier case, comes to see him about the McGinty case he welcomes some activity. James Bentley has just been found guilty of Mrs McGinty's murder but has not yet been sentenced. Superintendent Spence is not happy that Bentley is really guilty and asks Poirot to retrace the investigation.The problem with Bentley is that he is such a hangdog that he looks guilty and Poirot thinks that he can't blame the jury for their verdict, but he doubts that Bentley could kill anyone. Poirot goes to stay in the village of Broadhinny and puts it about that there is new evidence come to light that Bentley may not have committed murder after all. As Poirot questions those Superintendent Spence has already questioned, new evidence does indeed come to light. Someone tries to push Poirot under a train so he knows he is on the right track, but he is not quick enough to prevent another murder. Ariadne Oliver is chagrined to learn it has taken place under her very nose.This is a carefully woven plot with Poirot trying to track down the identity of four women whose photos appeared in the local paper. There are several likely people and we see an idea surfacing that was used in an earlier novel, that so many people lost their identity papers during air raids and dislocation during the Second World War, that you can never be sure that people are who they say they are. Poirot again gets a young woman to assist him in his investigation, and in the final pages we glimpse him indulging in some matchmaking.A good read, but I really can't go along with Miss Marple replacing Hercule Poirot (see Synopsis).read more

An elderly woman is found murdered in her home. Her lodger, an unpleasant young man, if convicted of the crime, but the police officer in charge of the investigation believes he is innocent and recruits Ercule Poirot to investigate. Agatha Christie always surprises me when it comes to the identity of the criminal and this time is no exception, which is why I come back to her works again and again. I suspected everyone but the real villain and while many of the characters I pegged as untrustworthy were in fact hiding something (some even concealing secrets related to the case) none of them turned out to be guilty. I particularly enjoyed the characters in this story - the apple-eating authoress, the disheveled hostess, the clingy mother who isn't as weak as she'd like everyone to believe, a publicity-conscious politician, an impoverished nobleman turned farmer, a wealthy heiress who acts like she's the maid... Even if you can't be bothered to keep all the names straight you will know exactly who's who. One of the themes of this novel is revealed in the alternative title - Blood Will Tell. The notion that character traits are hereditary comes up in conversation and the murder, when discovered, exclaims "I can't help it! It's in my blood!". While there is a reason the saying "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" exists I don't subscribe to the idea that one's predecessors' flaws as well as their strengths are irrevocably a part of one's character and feel that Christie didn't either.read more

This is the first Poirot book I have read, although it is the twenty-eighth of the series (out of thirty-nine). I have always been a fan of the TV series, so when Christmas came around my parents naturally bought me two of the books. This one has Poirot going to see his friend Superintendent Spence, who has just had a man convicted for murder based on his evidence, and he will be hanged. However, he feels unhappy with the verdict, because although all the evidence points directly to him, he doesn’t feel he is the right ‘type’ to kill, so asks Poirot to take a look at the case and see if he can either find the real culprit or put his mind at ease.It’s a lot shorter than I was expecting, but it was definitely a good read. The twists in the story kept me interested the whole way through; it was a pleasure to read and hard to put down. And Poirot himself is absolutely charming, I found him very likeable. All the characters were very believable. It also has some great humorous comments (not laugh out loud funny, but enough to make me chuckle or smile to myself) so it’s not all doom and gloom. Definitely enjoyable, but more of a light, short read (in my opinion).The only downside I had about this book was that I didn’t know men could be called ‘Evelyn’ and women ‘Craig’ – both seem pretty gender-specific names to me. Maybe I’m just being petty but it did bother me a bit (though it may be just a matter of time-difference, since Poirot is obviously not set in the modern day).read more